Burchard took part in the early wars over Swabia. His family being from Franconia, he founded the monastery of St Margarethen in Waldkirch to extend his family's influence into the Rhineland. On his father's arrest and execution for high treason in 911, he and his wife, Regelinda, daughter of Count Eberhard I of Zürich, went to Italy: either banished by Count Erchanger or voluntarily exiling themselves to their relatives over the Alps. Around 913, Burchard returned from exile and took control over his father's property. In 915, he joined Erchanger and Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria, in battle against the Magyars. Then Burchard and Erchanger turned on King Conrad I and, at the Battle of Wahlwies in the Hegau, defeated him. Erchanger was proclaimed duke.

After Erchanger was killed on 21 January 917, Burchard seized all his lands and was recognised universally as duke. In 919, King Rudolph II of Upper Burgundy seized the county of Zürich and invaded the region of Konstanz, then the centre and practical capital of the Swabian duchy. At Winterthur, however, Rudolph was defeated by Burchard, who thus consolidated the duchy and forced on the king his own territorial claims. In that same year, he recognised the newly elected king of Germany, Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony. Henry in turn gave Burchard rights of taxation and investiture of bishops and abbots in his duchy.

In 922, Burchard married his daughter Bertha to Rudolph and affirms the peace of three years prior. Burchard then accompanied Rudolph into Italy when he was elected king by opponents of the Emperor Berengar. In 924, the emperor died and Hugh of Arles was elected by his partisans to oppose Rudolph. Burchard attacked Novara, defended by the troops of Lambert, Archbishop of Milan. There he was killed, probably on April 29. His widow, Regelinda (d. 958), remarried to Burchard's successor, Herman I. She had given him five children: